IBM has been co-developing HACMP with a company called Availant since 1990, and in November 2003, iSeries HA software vendor Lakeview Technology Inc acquired Availant to broaden its position in the HA arena. In that same month, Lakeview also snapped up HA Technical Solutions, which offered HA clustering software for Unix, Linux, and Windows platforms.
HACMP V5.3 is noteworthy because it is the first version of the clustering software that supports IBM’s AIX 5L V5.3 operating system. While the new Power5-based servers will run the earlier AIX V5.2, the sophisticated virtualization features that are supported on Power5 iron require AIX V5.3; AIX V5.2 has much less flexible and coarser-grained logical machine partitioning.
IBM says that the updated HACMP software simplifies the integration of DB2 and Oracle databases in a cluster, supports Veritas file systems as well as IBM’s own file systems for AIX, and supports up to 32 nodes. (A node these days means an AIX instance, because partitioning allows a server to be carved up into pieces.)
The software also includes extended distance (XD) add-ons that allow several different styles of clustering over large geographical distances. IBM says it will withdraw HACMP V5.2 from marketing on April 30, 2006 and will discontinue service on the program on September 30, 2007.
